This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

What about the renters? FCR's Stuckey asserts, "We will take care of them"

At the Community Board 8 hearing on Atlantic Yards Thursday, Shabnam Merchant of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn read a statement from South Brooklyn Legal Services (SBLS). It warned that rent-regulated tenants left in the proposed project footprint remain vulnerable, given the relocation agreements that Forest City Ratner (FCR) has offered.

FCR's Jim Stuckey later said no, that the tenants would not be left out in the cold, yet he was unwilling--at least for the time being--to provide documentary evidence of that.

What the agreements say

Yes, the agreements sound good. They'd pay the difference between their current rent and that charged for a new apartment, and they'd be guaranteed a space in the Atlantic Yards project at their previous rent.

However, the relocation agreements, according to SBLS, “leave [renters] vulnerable.” The agreements would pay the differential in rent for only three years, which means that, given that the project wouldn’t be finished until 2010 at the earliest, the tenant would be left paying a high rent for some unspecified period.

Indeed, as the excerpt above from one agreement offered last year shows, the differential would last three years.

Gag order and more

Also, if Forest City Ratner walks away from the project for any reason, the deal is void. Finally, the agreement requires that the signers cease from any opposition to the project (right). By contrast, tenants in rent-regulated apartments are guaranteed many more protections if their building is to be demolished.

Stuckey says it's ok

I caught up with Jim Stuckey, president of FCR's Atlantic Yards Development Group, after his statement to CB8, and asked him about the relocation agreements.

“The three years was never meant to be a period that we would leave people out in the lurch," he said. "And if it turns out for any reason at all that we have to contribute to subsidizing them for a longer period of time, that we will certainly do that. This was negotiated with people earlier on, and the project has actually taken on new life, but there’s no question in my mind that if it takes longer, we will take care of them.”

The document I've excerpted was dated 2005, so "earlier on" is relative, though perhaps it was the same document offered a year earlier. Also, as the excerpt at right shows, another segment suggests that the contract would offer protection for five years, not three, which would be a greater degree of protection.

Was that contradictory draftsmanship aimed to mislead, or just a careless discrepancy?

What's the policy?

So, has the developer agreed to subsidize differential rent for longer than three years for the renters who've already left the footprint? “I just won’t—even though it would be to my benefit to do so—violate confidentiality," Stuckey responded. "I just won’t do it.”

Well, FCR did agree to waive confidentiality agreements for an April New York Times article about condo owners and others who sold their property to the developer, and the article was favorable enough to make an Atlantic Yards e-newsletter.

If Forest City Ratner has agreed to subsidize differential rent for as long as necessary, that would be news, and redound to the developer's credit.

What should a tenant do?

I reminded Stuckey that current tenants are being advised by SBLS that the agreements leave them vulnerable.

“I think maybe their attorney’s saying that,” he responded.

So, I asked, what agreements are how being offered to people still left in the footprint?

He wouldn't specify how many years of differential rent would be paid. “I think the answer is: 'we’ll take care of them,'" he said. "What I’m not going to do is get into the specifics with individuals.”

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Pacific Park Brooklyn is seriously delayed, Forest City Realty Trust said yesterday in a news release, which further acknowledged that the project has caused a $300 million impairment, or write-down of the asset, as the expected revenues no longer exceed the carrying cost.

The Cleveland-based developer, parent of Brooklyn-based Forest City Ratner, which is a 30% investor in Pacific Park along with 70% partner/overseer Greenland USA, blamed the "significant impairment" on an oversupply of market-rate apartments, the uncertain fate of the 421-a tax break, and a continued increase in construction costs.

While the delay essentially confirms the obvious, given that two major buildings have not launched despite plans to do so, it raises significant questions about the future of the project, including:if market-rate construction is delayed, will the affordable h…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …

Click on graphic to enlarge. This is post-dated to stay at the top of the blog. It will be updated as announced configurations change and buildings launch. The August 2014 tentative configurations proposed by developer Greenland Forest City Partners will change, and the project is already well behind that tentative timetable.